endlessrecession

Bingle: While your daughters scores and stats are wonderful the entire point of this thread is that "so are many millions of others out there" and frankly the college admissions process is quirky and sometimes shockingly absurd. Even with superb stats there is NO guarantee.

Your list is lovely. But it has NO sure thing matches and NO slam dunk eyes closed safeties. You would be well advised to find some.

Your daughter may well be admitted to her top three choices. Great! But it is essential that every student take a sobering look at their list and cover their bases.

The addage "embrace your match and safety" schools is really important, even in these difficult times.

My kid didnt get into any reaches and got into only her match and safety schools. She is at a match school now and thriving.

Finally, too much emphasis is placed on "fairy tale" notions of "how pretty is the campus" and "how prestigious is its name?" You are far better off focusing on personal fit for YOU.

Not the "best college you can get into, but the best college for YOU."

Erin's Dad

If you're addressing earlier posters please remember that posters from the earlier part of the thread have probably moved on since that was a year ago! Token was bumping the post to get feedback and to remind everyone to have a safety.

tokenadult

bingle's child appears to be in at Carleton. (Check the more recent posts by the same user.)

Coolbrezze

If I had to apply to a safety school I would say Arizona State University or University of Colorado- Boulder. Both are good schools, and can somewhat be hard to imply as safeties.... though their rankings fall low, but they are well recognized universities.

tokenadult

This is a good time of the year (summer in the United States) to bring up this thread so that students can consider what admissions safety college to line up for the next application season.

darling

Let's keep in mind that SAT scores are no means a "slam dunk." A girl I know was CONVINCED she would get into X U because as she put it, her SAT scores were way above the average. She was rejected. With so many qualified applicants for different spots, high SAT scores are by no means a guarantee of acceptance unless the school you're looking at only looks at SAT scores and GPA or admit applicants under a numbers based formula.

Coolbrezze

^
I've heard of students being overqualified for a university, alerting the university your more than likely using it as a safety and more than likely not attend, so I've heard universities will reject to open spots for others. I guess if your overqualified applying as ED/EA thats binding will let them know it's your top choice.

darling

^ Yup, it's called Tufts syndrome I believe!

chaosakita

For a good reason to apply to a safety school, consider this story: A guy went to a city and got sick from the food there. Later, he automatically rejected all of the applicants from the city because of that.

It's a really, really arbitrary process.

whitesox24

Here's the story that chaosakita is referring to...

"One night, I got food poisoning at a restaurant in Buffalo. The next day, I rejected all the Buffalo applications."

Dirty Secrets of College Admissions - The Daily Beast

tokenadult

Daily Beast is not a source with acceptable standards of journalism.

tokenadult

I see a lot of students are considering what colleges to put on their application list, so I'll refresh this thread as a reminder to current applicants. Good luck to all of you applying this year.

mom2collegekids

Yes, good reminder....

And to those who don't have full-pay parents....

Try to apply to at least 2-3 financial safeties (affordable schools that you can either pay for "out-of-pocket," thru grants, thru merit scholarships, and/or MINIMAL loans).

I recommend more than one just in case your "top picks" don't work out (acceptance-wise or money-wise), so you won't just be left with one lone "consolation prize" in the spring.

Another reason is that any financial safety that you like in the fall, may not be liked in the spring. So, apply to more than one.

With 2-3 Financial Safeties, you'll still have a choice if that's all you have to choose from in the spring.

tokenadult

And now I can report that this approach worked for our family. Our oldest son has been in at his safety for a while (it was the first of his acceptances that he learned about, because he applied in early October on a "rolling" basis). Getting that news takes the pressure off more speculative applications in the regular round, and indeed allows reducing the total number of applications filed. I hope all of you have lined up a suitable "safety" college for this year's application season, and that you hear good news from it not too long from now.

applicannot

I applied to a rolling admissions safety and it was one of the best choices I made. I was accepted in October with honors college, graduate school acceptance guarantee, full tuition scholarship, etc. It was the University of Pittsburgh. Knowing that I had a fairly affordable, amazing option behind me made me more comfortable AND more confident. If you can find a rolling admissions school you like, DO IT. It makes the college application so much calmer - and it can encourage you to take the right risks (for me, that risk was Stanford - see the left for more information).